Study Finds: How Fasting Wrecks Your Health Long-Term

Hi, Christian, you're not here. Today I'm going to go over one fasting study just to give you a little bit of the nuance.

So you can see there's actually a lot of deleterious effects from fasting.

But the researchers aren't looking for those. So you have to take a little bit more of a nuance approach when looking at the papers.

And then because there's so few markers each study can really test because of limitations and constraints that we have to really look at a lot of different studies to kind of get the nuances and weave together a little bit of a tapestry of actually what are the negative effects of fasting that regular leg almost always are kind of overlooked.

They're not given enough attention if any. Just so you're aware that it's not all rainbows unicorns and autophagy when you fast. Okay, a lot of bad stuff happens. And what I'm going to do is over the next weeks and maybe months as I'm writing my book on fasting, I'm going to be sharing insights like this. So what I will recommend to you, I'm going to have a video where the study will be on screen.

In this particular one, there's some charts and stuff from the paper that would be useful for you to see. So the link will be in the podcast description. Follow that to see the stuff again.

It would really help you kind of visualize some of the stuff now. I'm going to walk sort of talk you through everything anyway. So if you're on the podcast layer, you will still get a ton of value from this.

But it would help even at a later point if you just click the link below and go to my YouTube channel and subscribe there because you know how they say a picture paints a thousand words.

If you're already on the video, I'm sorry to waste your time. Let's get right into it. So the paper is titled is muscle and protein loss relevant in long term fasting in healthy men.

A prospective trial on physiological adaptations in the journal of kexia sarcopena and muscle published in 2021.

And in terms of what they were looking at, they got a decent result. Right. So but again, you have to, this is where the new ones sort of comes into play.

Let's say a paper, a study are looking for improvements in cardiometabolic markers or weight loss. That's usually what they look at with these studies.

They can report good results. But if we look at what they were what markers they were reporting, we can actually see even though they thought they got good results in terms of what they were looking for their outcomes and end points.

There's stuff in there that we can glean that helps us to build again this tapestry of what actually happens when a person fast, right.

Because again, in the mainstream, it's like an alternative mainstream or you just start burning all the fact and then you get into autophagy and then you just rejuvenate and like these miraculous things happen and that's honestly that's pushing.

So let's get into it. So this was a trial, 16 healthy men, average 44 years plus minus 14 years. So there was guys that were 30, guys that were 58. So in that sort of range.

So not some of these guys are pretty young to begin with. Now, here's the other thing. This was a quote unquote fasting study, but they did it using the the Buckinger.

Here, you'll help me protocol, okay, which Buckinger here's like a pioneer in the fasting sort of space. There's a couple of clinics that they have.

But this protocol allows for about depending on the paper on the study between 200 and 400 calories per day. So in this case, it was they were getting us a supplement of basically juice broth and like vegetable soup or whatever that gave them about 200 to 250 calories a day.

Here already, if you just if you just factor this in, this is not a truth like water fast water only fast. So because they were getting some calories mostly from carbohydrate, this already has a huge, huge muscle and lean tissue sparing effect. And remember that the paper is examining is muscle and protein loss relevant in long term fasting.

So this already is a little bit crewy. Let's just say because you might let's say, or your doctor or like a practitioner health coach influencer, they might kind of glance at the study and be like, Hey, look, the day said it's not a big issue. You know, after four days, you know, it's going to be fine after four days because you're entering to get doses and lean tissue is spared protein is spare that point.

If you then listen to that influencer and then you go on a water fast and you don't do this protocol where you get some, you know, carbs in the morning, some carbs at night to spare to do some of the stress on your body, then you're going to kind of hurt yourself if that makes sense.

So what was the result? So the 10 day fast decreased body weight by seven percent. Okay, so on average, they lost 5.9 kilograms and quickly do the math for you here. That is 5.9 times 2.2 equals about let's say 13 almost 13 pounds of weight and look at the next statement here and basal metabolic rate was reduced by 12%.

So they're the amount of kind of calories they burn, they're basal metabolic rate was reduced by 12%. Now fat mass and lean soft tissues accounted for 40 and 60% of the weight loss. What does that mean? So fat mass, so 12.98 or 13 pounds or 5.9 kilograms times 0.4.

So they lost about 5.2 pounds of fat, right, 40% of the of the 13 pounds. That's about 5.2 pounds of fat during 10 days. Okay, so if we divide 5.2 divided by 10, that is about the lost half a pound of half a pound.

Okay, so you have to ask yourself is that were the juice worth the squeeze and at first glance, it's like, oh, wow, you know, half a pound of fat per day, like 225 grams of fat loss per day.

That sounds like a pretty amazing. However, you got to kind of start yourself, you're going to suffer and these guys remember they were in a center where they get a lot of pampering, right, they're away from the stress of life and like in these centers, they don't let them have their phone in the communal areas and like they're they have a curfew type thing where you have to be in your room and resting and you know, like you can't just fast for 10 days with the normal.

Like life's life and style, if you have kids and a job and like you need time away, right, so you got to spend money like thousands to be in a center to get this half a pound a day. However, even if let's say you said, okay, the juice is worth the squeeze, what what's the other cost? So the 60% of the other weight loss that was lean soft tissues.

That was 44% of that was extracellular water they estimated, right, some of the stuff is not very super accurate and it's not perfect, but we just kind of let's just roll with it for now.

So the other 14% was muscle and liver glycogen and water that's associated with it and then 42% was metabolic actively in tissue as they call it.

So let's do the math quickly. So again, 13 pounds, it's 12.98, but let's just say 13 pounds times 0.6. So that's the all the 60% of lean soft tissues lost.

So of that, so we're going to times 7.8 by sorry if I'm blowing your sort of your drums with nonsense math, I hate math too. So times 0.42, this is like the most advanced math I can do, you know, so that's 3.27 pounds of lean soft lean metabolic actively in tissue that they lost.

And what do they characterize as metabolic actively in tissue? It would be muscle and organs like the liver and the intestine. So and actually bone is, you know, actually technically has a lot of protein in there that can be catabolized, but they assumed that bone wasn't affected.

So, but like, so think about it like this. Let's just put it this way. Is 5.2 pounds of fat loss in 10 days worth losing 3.27 pounds of your organs and your muscles and your collagen, your maybe your skin and your joints getting degenerated and your bones getting degenerated.

Is it worth it? Because to me, it looks like it's not 1 to 1, but here's why it's not 1 to 1. It's because they had 250 calories divided by roughly 4. About 62 grams of carbs, let's say 60 grams of carbs a day added supplement. What does that mean? Well, if they had removed that, if that wasn't a part of the protocol, this buckinger or buckinger.

That means these folks, not getting these 60 or 62 grams of carbs a day, they would have probably further degenerated their lean tissues. And when you kind of look at, look at it, basically protein to glucose conversion.

It's about, it's about a 50% efficiency, which means let's say you, you, you, you catabolize 100 grams of protein in your body or from meat that you ate, let's say, whatever, you're going to make from 100 grams of protein, not meat, but the protein portion of that meat or your own meat, you're going to make 50 grams of glucose.

It's a very, very, very degenerative, very expensive and inefficient. And remember, if you've ever tried to put on muscle, you know, especially older people, women, like kind of, more stressed people, you know how hard it is to put on muscle.

So to think that you're just going to quote unquote build back better in the next few months and just regain all that muscle and especially this other lean tissue like in your joints and your skin and your bones, that is a pipe dream.

So again, you have to ask yourself, is the five point two pounds of fat loss worth the three point, whatever it was, two, seven of metabolic organs and metabolic active lean tissue, is it worth it?

I would posit that it's not and these guys were lucky that they had this buckinger sort of protocol supplement of extra some, some carbohydrates that would spare that the digit further the generation.

Okay. So what did they conclude, attend a fast appears safe in healthy humans. So they're like looking at protein loss. So they're like protein loss occurs in early fast, but decreases as kids of genesis increases.

Fasting combined with physical activity does not negative the impact muscle function and that's kind of all they were looking for it wasn't like they weren't looking to prove fasting is amazing or they have very specific sort of thing about protein loss here.

So let's look at it a little bit like let's look at what they actually did so the so they did the first of all they did the study at the buckinger buckinger will help me clinic in Uberlingen Uberlingen Germany Deutschland Uberlingen

which I haven't looked at that clinic but I they have another clinic in Marbella Spain and I looked at it yesterday man this clinic is gorgeous it's amazing and the minimum you pay for like a seven day fast of like 3000 plus and then up to a 30 day fast you could pay as I kid you not as much as 60,000 if you want to be like a sort of VIP sort of suite and then they have a ton of cool stuff you can get like body work and an IV.

So like you have to remember a lot of people that go to these clinics that are like just fasting for better health and longevity they're doing a lot of healthy behaviors so that you have this healthy user bias so they might already be fasting they might be accustomed to it they might be eating organic food already living in a nice clean environment and can afford better care for themselves and like a body work and in the center then you can get body work and they do Pilates.

It's really nice like honestly like I would I if I had like cash to burn I go there just as a sanatorium type thing to just I'll tell them look guys I'm coming and I will not fast and some people like you can actually go there and tell them how we take 100 calories a day or up to 2000 calories a day so I'm like okay I'll eat 2000 calories for like 15 days whatever get a little bit shredded or whatever and then I'm going to I want to get the IV drips and

the Myers cocktails and all the the body work and massages and Pilates and then go for walks in the sun on the beach and so here's the thing in that low stress environment you're going to do a little bit better you know but a lot of people the way they do it they still work they're trying to fast for three days and they got kids they got their phones blasting them they're not eating generally well before and after so there's a lot of things that are not dialed in and I'm going to do it.

In those people are going to do worse so these guys here like this sample of people that they're studying is a really um it's a little bit again skewing towards this healthy user bias I can plague studies just like the unhealthy user bias can which we won't discuss that today but I'll have a future episode to kind of explain this a bit more okay so what else so the here's the fasting protocol so

they were under daily supervision with nurses and physicians so again a lot of care they're getting pampered it's nice so they go into the clinic they had a standardized vegetarian dinner next day the baseline period they were given 600 calories vegetarian diet three meals

and then look to initiate the 10 day fasting period the intestine or tract was emptied with the intake of a laxative okay so N A S O I think that's um just steps on salt okay so this is actually really good because to clear the intestines means because when you don't eat you you don't poop you don't have the pair of stouts is moving the feces along that can actually um that can uh that the fecal material that you can absorb so much

some of the toxins and byproducts as it kind of sits in the gut and that can kind of basically altering all basic poison you in a sense and causing inflammatory sort of reactions so the the fact that they did that is a great start to the fasting some people don't okay so if you're not doing all of these things that they're doing when you're fasting you are again stacking this disadvantageous factors against yourself

then during fasting all subjects receive a portion of 20 grams of honey each morning uh had to drink two three liters of water or herbal tea then they had organic freshly squeezed fruit juice to 250 meals at noon and vegetable broth in the evening so again this really takes the edge off the stress okay so again if people are not doing that out there they just water fasting for like five days

they are in a much higher stress state than these people would have been these guys told today the intake caloric intake was 200 to 250k cal per day and look during the fasting period an enema was applied every other day to remove intestinal remnants and disqualmated mucosal cells which again this really kind of helps to clear stuff out so that because the stress of fasting paradoxically people don't know but cortisol and stress increase

intestinal permeability or leaky gut so by removing with an enema these remnants of dead stuff in there this is another very beneficial thing that can kind of prevent inflammatory stuff happening when the bits of dead bacteria and whatever else chemicals get into the blood stream and the immune system kind of has to react you know

and then food was reintroduced during three days progressively from 800 to 1600 calories per day and then here they also combined the fasting with low to moderate intensity program of physical activity with certified trainers one hour gymnastics which you know the thing is maybe I if I was fasting like that I wouldn't be doing a lot of activity because it's just additional stress but the fact that doing things like gymnastics and whole body stretching and yoga and outdoor walk

so they're getting sun and daylight 90 minute walk in the afternoon again daylight sun Marbella is pretty relatively clear to see I've been there a few times used to live in Spain kind of near and near it for a while with my parents and so the whole body stretching and the yoga it all kind of moves lymph along and just it's really beneficial and again these people

or these guys are getting pampered at the center which by the way doing studies like this at that center huge huge conflict of interest and a lot of bias because I'll tell you the center you heard was Buckinger

you help me center or whatever and one of the the lead authors of the study is Francois you help me the Toledo okay involved in that center okay so

bit of a conflict of interest but come on it's it's like let's not be nitpicky here so where were we okay so the clinical outcomes so they would measure them every few days

body weight waist circumference blood pressure heart rate by a nurse they looked at body composition so the what what's interesting here they did a baseline of course as you do at a few days in and so on

doing the fast and the refeed but what's really nice that I like that it is they did a follow up three months down the line and very few studies are doing this and first it's expensive

first of all but I tell you the reason they're not doing it is because especially if you're doing markers like these guys the amount of markers they did is

uncharacteristic a lot of this research they do a lot less biomarker analysis with many of these studies have looked at if you actually follow these people down the line

especially if they're doing periodic fasting not just once off you're gonna see a lot of horrible horrible stuff happen to these people I guarantee you and you see

wine I mean it after three months the follow up what it show it I was like I can't believe the glossing over all this they didn't they basically glossed over the horrible stuff that happened

okay let's see what else we're going here so okay they did stuff around physical performance which to be honest like again they're looking

at again it's muscle protein loss and kind of muscle muscle function so they were looking at honestly I don't care so much about

do you maintain your strength before and after the fast even if you do I don't care I don't care if you're just as strong

at 40 years of age 10 days after starving yourself to me that's that's not the the deleterious effect the deleterious effects happen over time

over months and years especially when this is a chronic thing or with like intermittent fasting or a periodic thing with you know let's say

five day fast every three months or seven day fast or two 10 day fast twice a year all of that's really terrible idea

so let's see what else I'm gonna I'm gonna spare you a lot of the details here so the physical so they did physical activity we cover that

so look at this I'm just gonna go directly to to the results here so first of all they increased their step their steps during the study duration

so they actually increased their daily steps number by 60% so by about five 5500 steps extra per day give or take 800

to me this is introducing a confounding variable because yeah this probably increases stress on them in terms of energy

requirement so they will probably burn more fat right but at the expense of what probably lean tissue

so this if you if you want to do this well I think the physical activity should remain the same but again

this they will have a very specific goal here but I think this this definitely kind of is it's kind of confounding the results in a way

you want to keep things as close as possible to what they were doing and then just introduce the intervention of fasting

so that because imagine imagine introduce fasting as the intervention but also add red light therapy and meditation

and a bunch of stuff during the 10 days so then if the outcome is good was it the meditation was it the red light therapy was the you know the massage is you know whatever

so it's just introducing introducing more physical activity like 60% more steps a day that's significant I think that wasn't a good thing

but let's look at the baseline so the baseline like we said 44 years plus minus 14 the weight of the subject was 85.7 kg

so just to give you the pounds 85.7 times 2.2 is 188 pounds on average give or take 5 pounds ish

so there weren't overweight like their BMI was 26.2 give or take 0.9

they weren't overweight they weren't fat their fat mass was 17% 17.5 give or take 1.7%

so the word like again they were healthy they weren't fat they weren't overweight they weren't old

so the thing about it is like these guys probably maybe they may want to lose a few pounds we all do as a were we all want to be a bit leaner I'm sure most of us

but they didn't need to lose a ton of weight right it kind of goes to the to the to the point if you're already kind of close to your optimum weight or let's say within 10 pounds of it which isn't too bad to be overweight by 10 pounds

it's not the end of the world right or let's say you're close to your ideal weight within like 5 pounds

well in that case fasting doesn't really make sense right for weight loss so then why the excuse my French why the hell would you want to fasten to live longer for the autophagy

that's kind of the scam and then if you're overweight which will cover in a separate video or two or five if you're overweight and then the goal is to lose weight

I think fasting is probably one of the not just the worst but the the most dangerous and insidious ways to to screw up your health

because you get a quick weight loss at the expense of your metabolic rate and a bunch of other horrible things happening

if you're healthy and you don't need to lose much or any weight fasting is stupid because the whole autophagy and longevity is is not true

okay and then if you're overweight you have let's say 20 plus pounds to lose then fasting will give you a quick result but it'll screw up

so who should fast of those two categories neither and those are the main categories of people that were fast

and of course you have a third category of people with pretty you know serious diseases and conditions

I would pause it in a separate video later on in the next weeks or or month that a lot of those people we can help them without starving them

of the nutrients and the energy that they need to heal okay so who should fast nobody should fast that's kind of

that's kind of my take here right let's look at the changes in anthropometric markers

okay so we already covered 5.9 kg lost after 10 days let's look at now this is where we're going to look at the weight

so the lost weight you can see on the if you're watching you can see I'm going to maybe zoom in a little bit more

these don't these graphs that's the best quality that you will see I can't make them bigger and that's unfortunately

the maximum size but I'll make it a little bit bigger here okay so you can see here the weight goes down and then a follow-up

it only slightly increases in there so the black here that's the baseline measurements the gray is the 10 days of fasting

then the the darker gray is the three refeed days RF123 and then FUP is I'm not going to say it you know what I'm going to say

it's how F-top there were three months later no the FUP the follow-up is three months later so you can see they lost the weight progressive each day

the tiny very tiny amount of weight was regained during the the refeed because remember if you remember the refeed day was 800 calories

up to 1600 calories progressively so they were still basically on a starvation diet so in the follow-up period they they were like significantly below their baseline weight

which I would say not not a lot so actually this is 80 this is 85 so they were like they went from if they lost 5 kg 5.9 kg

they were they were basically like they they regal of the six let's say kg they regain like three and a half or so

so but the thing is when you know you're gonna be getting followed up on you are going to probably do healthy things

you don't want to like you know go on a Dorito and pizza binge because you know oh man I can't get fat now I'm going to look like I do brony in front of these researchers

okay now I just wanted to it was a different study I want to just check something here okay they will cover this in a different video

okay so where the heck where was I I was just checking something okay so so waste circumference basically returned to almost the same you can see here

so they lost some waste circumference a lot of that came back now what's interesting is if you look at the systolic blood pressure and the diastolic blood pressure

it basically progressively kept getting lower including during refeed day one and two it kept getting lower with the systolic

there was a bit more kind of variability with the diastolic but I like to kind of did a workshop talking about this study and other studies for three hours

at the anarcho book conference a couple of weeks ago so I showed the guys and the gals that were at the workshop

and I was like yeah check this out so their blood pressure keeps going down why it can anyone guess why because they're slowly dying

because they're slowly dying that's why their blood pressure is lowering right and then a baseline oh sorry it followed up three months later it was basically basically a baseline

then let's look at this is where it starts to get interesting so let's see no this is so this is protein but protein oxidation will skip this over just to save time

but I covered some of this in more detail in my upcoming book on fasting so look here so fat mass again

loss accounted for 40% of changes in total body weight and then lean soft issues accounted for 60%

now 42 of that is metabolic active tissue which they say liver kidneys heart intestine muscles etc.

so I don't know about you but I don't want to engage in interventions where my kidneys and my heart degenerate

that's what lean soft tissue loss means and you liver degenerating and your intestines degenerating

I don't want that I want to engage in interventions where I'm building my body my lean tissues and maintaining them and optimizing their function

I don't want to be losing that for the sake of again five freaking pounds five pounds so imagine your imagine your 50 pounds overweight

okay maybe in that case you would lose a little bit more than 40% fat mass but from the research other and which we will we will cover soon

you see yourself the research you basically the fat mass loss is basically around a third in a lot of studies

okay so maybe if you're like 50 pounds overweight maybe you could creep up to like 40 45% 50% of at mass loss

right but there's a lot of other risks and problems with that okay but so even let's say you during the 10 days you lost let's say

instead of five pounds of fat you lost six pounds of fat is it really is 10 days of suffering going to and getting six pounds weight loss

which probably fat fat loss probably some of it you will regain when you start refeeding normally right

is it worth all that pain and suffering when you have 40

40 4 more pounds to lose and then remember some of that fat will come back on right so is it worth it

should should we be doing trying to sort of do this 10 day thing or 20 day thing where you start yourself to get this fat loss

or should we be thinking about what caused that weight loss to begin with

it because if you just do a fast you go back to your normal life you're gonna regain the weight

the key is always and I will cover this in more detail in the book of course and so on and I've talked about it

I've talked about it but the key is to improve the diet and get organic food and get like

addressed nutritional deficiencies you know things that the fasting regimen doesn't do in fact with in terms of

nutritional deficiencies and if you're hypothyroid which the one of the main symptoms of hypothyroidism for many people is weight gain

if you're hypothyroid and you're deficient in nutrients you're gonna make those deficiencies worse from fasting

and then you're gonna make your hypothyroidism even worse and then you're gonna destroy your metabolism as you will see in a second

and then you're gonna make the weight the fat regain even easier each time right so

it's crazy it's crazy that people are wasting time and I bet I guess look again there's a huge conflict of interest here

these guys have a clinic they're getting between three and a half thousand euros and up to 60,000 euros for the VIPs

of which people to be there so they have a big business and I know they're helping people

don't get me wrong I know they're helping people but it's not just the fasting

it's they're coaching them they're kind of they're working with practitioners there's so many other things

and you know you could do the fast get some drip IVs and that could like you know at least

ameliorate the nutritional deficiency issue right because you're getting vitamins and minerals

they offer those Myers cocktails and other IVs so like again this is not what normal people are doing

normal people are just like I'm not I'm not going into three days or five days or two days

they don't they're thinking about so many people aren't about sodium loss and getting a little bit of carbohydrate

to lower the stress and and moving the the body and the lymph like it's the first time I try to fast

I was basically on the couch all day and then I try to walk outside for a while it was horrible

I you know I felt like crap I was like I just have to get home a sap go home went back on the couch

and I didn't have energy to do anything that was like the first time I did it in many people

just they just stop eating without even thinking about are my deficient in things

am I am I going to worsen those deficiencies by not eating now for three days or five days

so look at this changes in basal metabolic rate so basal metabolic rate decreased gradually by 12% during fasting

so look at what they say here BMR basal metabolic rate values during refeed and follow up

remained lower than baseline values but the difference was not significant this is bullshit

okay let me read that again during the fasting their basal metabolic rate dropped by 12%

they then stayed their basal metabolic rate values during the refeed and follow up

remained lower than baseline values but the difference was not significant

now they might mean it was not statistically significant

but there's a difference between statistical significance just some arbitrary sort of a decision

they make for their numbers to line up so they can report whatever is out they want

and then there's clinical significance okay so let's look at figure three in the study

look at the baseline so you see here on the let's get this stuff on the x-axis

you have baseline before the fast fasting day four fasting day nine refeed day three and follow up

so and then on the on the y-axis you have the base metabolic rate in terms of calories

kilo calories per 24 hour period as you can see at baseline the black

they're basal metabolic rate so how many basically how many calories you burn at rest in 24 hours

it was almost 2,000 so sorry almost 1900 up to with a variance up to I guess 1950

1950 calories okay on day four of the fast it had dropped to just over 1700 calories

on day nine of the fast their basal metabolic rate how many calories they burn in 24 hour period at rest

minus activity and stuff was under 1700 calories just under on the third refeed day

it was just about close to 1700 calories and then the follow up three months later

three months later here in the checkered last FUP value it was their basal metabolic rate was just

sorry on refeed day three it was probably just under 1700s and then on the on the follow up

three months it was just over 1700 as you can see here okay so their baseline

metabolic rate was almost 1900 and then their base based on metabolic rate three months

then their fasting intervention the refeed period was just over 1700 from nine almost 1900 just under 1900 calories per day

two just over 1700 calories that's three months later they had not recovered

that is a huge maybe it's not statistically significant but that is clinically significant I'll tell you

I was at like I said there's an arc book conference couple of weeks back and at this just a day before the conference started

they were doing the speed networking event and I had my book out and I was telling people I fast things terrible idea

and everyone that I said it almost everyone was like what fast things supposed to be good no

so there's one dude told him about this study and this sort of graph and I just verbally explained it to him

and so I asked him and this he was a lay person he wasn't like a health practitioner by any means

but he was intermittent fasting for the last couple of years so I told him this is what happens after it and they fast

with the supplement of food you know 60 grams of carbs so I told him what do you think that means if you go from just under 90

you had 1900 calories based on metabolic rate to just over 1700 calories

what do you think that means so he just thought for a second he's like well you burn ice calories

like yes exactly but what does that mean for you what's the implication over the longer term

and he just thought for a little bit longer there's some a few seconds like you get fat

but yes you get fat because if your diet remains the same but your based on metabolic rate goes from almost 1900 calories

to just over 1700 calories well you're burning less calories and if you don't lower your dietary intake of food

you're gonna gain weight but here is the so that's like okay if if weight was an issue and not wanting to get fat or is an issue

that that absolutely is valid but here's the the bigger problem the bigger bigger bigger much bigger problem

is why is the metabolic rate three months later much lower like this like almost 200 calories

it's because the body is doing less things it's because the body lowered or turned off some functions

so it's not so it's it's it's burning less calories and what functions will it turn off

it's not going to turn off the heart or breathing or you know the brain will continue to work

it's what's what it's going to do is going to turn down the the corner called the less higher priority functions

the more nice to have functions right so that can be hair you know hair hairs are needed

regeneration of certain tissues especially like the skin and not not wide to for survival functions

and the bones you know remember they lost muscle mass or they lost the lost lean tissue

so that feeds into the lower metabolic rate but as you can see you're gonna build back better

they say you're gonna rebuild all that muscle and that that lean tissue but clearly they didn't

because they were burning less calories so that's the body's response to stress

is it lowers expenditure because it's it's preparing for calamitous events famine war

so this dude the same dude I was talking to he also told me oh by the way over the last couple of years

my libido has been lowered do you know why that could be I'm like did it start shortly after you started intermittent fasting

and he thought about it again for a few seconds I think so yeah and then I explained to him how fasting intermittent fasting

lowers men's testosterone by like 25% in eight weeks and that remains the same 12 months down the line

I'm gonna cover that in a separate video coming up in the next few days or a week or two

so yeah that explains things and that's these are the long-term insidious effects that the fasting influencers

some of whom especially the guys are definitely on antibiotics testosterone or maybe even like stronger synthetic stuff

they're able to stave off that catabolism of the lean tissues and and and ameliorate the effects of cortisol and stuff like that

because they're using testosterone has anti-cathabolic effects right so a lot of these shredded guys out there

especially if they're like under 40 in the in their 30s or even in their 20s

they're terrible example for what we should do as 40 plus your old people especially if you're

like 45 plus especially if you're a woman and you know if you're not if your job isn't to be like a healthy influencer

where all you do all these just like make content and look after your health

and you don't have access to all the peptides and all this other stuff and you know these IV drip vitamins every week

and every other two every two weeks or whatever so like you have to remember that what works what even for you

what worked for you 20 years ago might not work now or even 10 years ago you know I'm 40 in in a month

I can't do some things that I could do 10 years ago like I was a 10 years ago I was training Thai boxing like

up to six and even eight times a week some days I was training twice a day because I was training for a fight

and I was working a full-time job in an office and I was you know my wife now she was my girlfriend

we had just met we're like you know doing stuff with her going out and and and having fun

and I was doing like a weekend one weekend the month I was doing a neuromuscular therapy course

and sports you know sports and event massage so doing a lot of stuff and then I can't do that sort of

that's sort of regimen right now you know I could not do that and if I try to I will drive my health into the ground

so and I could I I'm sure 10 years ago we're 15 years ago I could have done of easily a two week fast and survived it and maybe

even said oh I feel so much everything was better after but it that won't be the case now and you have to remember that

the older you get the more you have to protect yourself from stress and if fasting was magical

in some way yeah okay maybe we could do it but there's nothing magical about it

there's nothing magical about it you're just degenerating your body to survive the stress

that is it and you will see if you're a new listener or or viewer you will see in the coming weeks

and if you haven't read my book you've seen the coming weeks I'll give you a lot more research

as as I kind of culminated to publishing the book but if you're you know an existing listener viewer

or a client which many clients are listening to the podcast as well

you already know this so you kind of already know to protect yourself I'm just kind of

it's kind of not for you this information but although these new ones is probably are interesting to you

to further solidify your understanding of why it's a dumb idea to fast to start yourself to better health

what an arrogant thing let's starve ourselves to better health

well would have loved to put that in his in his next book

1985 I'm assuming that's what he would have called it

so changing fitness skeletal muscle function and biochemical properties so this is I feel like

they spent a lot of time here because look they're maximum grip

strength which is whatever it's it's a valid marker for

for stuff but look at leg strength increased on follow-up here

so they seem to like be padding they spent way too much time here they were padding themselves

on the back that there wasn't like a loss of like muscle function I don't care

three months later if you're just as strong right because a lot of it's

the nervous system you know you could like you could maintain strength

even with with a little bit of lean tissue loss remember because a lot of that

lean tissue loss is the intestines delivered the

the heart even parts of the brain so if you're doing an exercise

during the fasting after the fasting you're gonna you're giving a the body

a stress or a stimulus to maintain strength okay

but at the expense of what other stuff I'm just gonna I'm sorry

to belabor this point but look again look at this I'm

into like tattoo this on my forehead this is the basal metabolic

the start way up high 1900 almost

and on follow-up three months later it's

just slightly higher than after the three days of refeeding it's

unbelievable how one ten day fast can do this just

recure metabolic rate now I'll do another video on a study

on intermittent fasting which I covered in my book how to actually live longer volume one

after two weeks already the metabolic rate of the

intermittent fasters was reduced in two weeks with intermittent fasting

without lowering calories they didn't try to lower calories

so you can imagine if intermittent fasting will lower your

metabolic rate in two weeks a ten day fast is gonna wreck it as you can see

here it's horrific this is a horrific

belaboring this point because this is this is the one thing if you can take away

here is this is the bad thing because again

it's not just about burning more or less calories and gaining more fat

it's if a lower metabolic rate means less functions in the body

are doing things like less stuff is happening in the body

and that means the body

down-regulated some stuff

that could have been useful for you

you know hair skin nails nail growth

not that it's useful but you know like generally

during the less calories eating less and more stress my

I noticed my I'm cutting my nails a lot less often

when I'm eating more and like everything is like low stress

I notice my hair grows faster my nails especially that's very noticeable

so those are just nice to have right

we're talking about other stuff like repair regeneration

that requires metabolic activity okay belaboring the point here

super hard what else okay so cardio metabolic

changes in plasma lipids glucose insulin concentration

but wait there's more check this out

so figure five here I'm only gonna cover

two things look at the plasma glucose okay

their plasma glucose

after the refeed was slightly higher very slightly

than baseline and their plasma glucose

their their their morning fasting glucose was actually higher

three months later on follow up so all this nonsense

about how fasting will improve cardio metabolic

markers and risk factors with their freaking blood plasma glucose

is higher three months later that means

on its own it doesn't necessarily mean

they're more dysfunctional metabolic speaking but look to the right here

I graph I the insulin plasma insulin

at baseline and then just if you see

on the refeed it's so it goes way lower

on refeed day three kind of bumps up quite a lot

close to baseline but this is the this is the crunch

cruncher kicker whatever this is the the the staggering part is

three months down the line their fasting

insulin was way higher

and this indicates metabolic dysfunction this indicates

they becoming more insulin resistant more less

and a loss or a degradation let's say

of glucoregulation okay so there

this is terrible because the whole point

of the whole thing with the fasting and whatever else is it's gonna improve

cardio metabolic risk factors because that's all they care in the mainstream

sort of far more sponsored nonsense right

they care about weight loss with the fasting and

improvement in cardio metabolic risk factors for the most part these guys kind of

lost over it because they were looking again at protein

loss and things like that muscle function and strength right so they weren't

they didn't care about this but I'm happy that at least

they did these markers and they they included them because

many studies would you believe they don't they do nowhere

near not even half or a third

of getting this much lab work and it goes on

so look changes in inflammatory markers

they say fasting lowers your inflammation and they say look

CRP remained unchanged during the intervention so CRP

C-reactive protein this is a basically

inflammatory marker non-specific can be raised by many things

but they say they CRP remained unchanged during the intervention and that's

bullshit look figure six a CRP

baseline just over one

fasting day one skyrockets basically

doubles to close to three up to four in some some of the guys

fasting day four still way higher

close to two so just over one day the baseline

close to three or I guess 2.6

on day day one close to two still higher

and only on day nine is the CRP

acute phase reactant inflammatory marker non-specific

is it actually lower than baseline so during the first at least four days

inflammation increased and then it was lower on the refeed day one and day three

but then it was back to baseline three months later

and then if you look at plasma IL-6 interleukin-6

what's interesting here baseline

lower on fasting day one

lower little bit lower

higher than fasting day one but a little bit lower than baseline on day four

higher than baseline on day nine

and then it lowers on refeed day one but still higher than baseline

and then it basically is double what it was based

baseline on refeed day three so during the refeed

on third day something is causing inflammation in these men

and then there's also

interferon gamma TNF alpha

plasma MCP1 plasma interleukin-10

so not all of these markers are worsened

on during fasting and or on follow up

but like the fact that the fact that they're saying

CRP remained unchanged when on the freaking graph it basically doubles on day one

and still higher on day four is I don't I don't have

was this peer reviewed like

these people were like the smartest people in the world

PhDs how are they saying things like this you know and then

I'm gonna cover this more in the book but like to me it's

this is really just in your face this ingenious

right I don't even know what to make of it but

I've seen other studies that show CRP

and some inflammatory markers increasing during the fast

I will explain in the book and then in future videos

the case or why that may be the case because there could be multiple things

that are causing this inflammation like the the

degeneration and destruction of tissue in cells

that that's one thing that can cause inflammatory processes

the release of the omega-6 polyensatory fats from the

from the fatty tissue that that's very can be very inflammatory and damaging

and then other things like chemicals and so on which to cover in future videos

but it's it's kind of crazy like oh yeah CRP remained unchanged

it freaking doubled here if you're watching the

the video it freaking doubled on day one

and was higher and it will at bay at uh

at follow up three months later it's the same as baseline okay

um so

that's kind of crazy and then

another interest is figure seven

um

so look so so they say changes in satiety

in appetite related regulatory hormones I think this is significant

circulating levels of

orexigenic i.e. ghrelin or anorexigenic

hormones PPPYY and GOP1

remained unchanged during the study

plasma leptin concentration was reduced during fasting and refeed

and this lower level was still maintained at follow up

now it seems like they they think that's a good thing

but for my understanding so you can see here a figure seven a

the the ghrelin is a hunger signaling hormone

so baseline it was about five

they want to fast it was a little bit higher maybe six six and a

half then the ghrelin goes lower

uh in uh on day four day nine it's

back to where it was on day one and during the refeed

day one and day three actually increases but here's the interesting thing and if you

can't see the if you're on the podcast so it's the

baseline was five that this ghrelin hunger signaling hormone makes you hungry

makes you want to eat

it was five in the black here and then

basically three months at the three months

follow up it was it had tripled

right that's not a good thing if your hunger hormone

ghrelin hunger signaling hormone triple what it was

at the baseline and then they fast three months later

makes basically increases at three x and then

if you look here the seven e here

plasma leptin at baseline it was close

I guess over seven hundred it plummets during the fast

and then the refeed but then at um

at three months follow up it was like six hundred so

not it was kind of it bumped back up quite high

it went from seven hundred something

to like two two hundred over two hundred

under two hundred close to one hundred stayed under two hundred during the fast in the refeed

but then it did it only climbed back to over six hundred

it's later so it had dropped it was significant quite a little lower

maybe not statistically significant but it was lower

then at baseline and so it could be because of the loss of fat mass

right but um so leptin is a more of a satiety

signaling hormone that fat tissue makes

so ghrelin triples that follow up three months later so hunger

signaling hormone and then the satiety hormone

is lower and

and then don't forget that they've lost

metabolically actively in tissue and they're based on metabolic rate

is like at close not not two hundred calories but close to two hundred calories lower

more than ten percent

and then look at figure seven each here

they have some qualitative sort of questions

they ask them how hungry do you feel score of a hundred

at baseline they were about fifty

during fasting they didn't feel as much hunger

day nine of fasting that it was higher than baseline how hungry do you feel this score

it increased on refeed day one

and refeed day three it was higher and then

three months follow up it was just slightly higher

than baseline right so you're you metabolic rate is lower

you've lost muscle mass and metabolic active organ tissue

you're ghrelin your hunger signaling hormone is tripled

your leptin your satiety hormone is

a little bit lower than it was at baseline and then you feel

just this hungry if not a little bit hungerier than before

and then how much do you think you can eat figure seven i

it was basically

the same as baseline on the three month follow up so

again you've lowered your metabolic rate

a lot maybe not statistically significant but 200 calories a day for a man

85 kg 185 whatever pounds that's significant

ghrelin hunger signaling hormone increases

leptin slightly lower satiety signaling hormone

then you feel just as hungry as before

like isn't that a disaster waiting to happen

if you fall off the rails here which maybe these guys are

very health conscious the fact that they send up for the study

maybe they want to come to this and maybe they start gaining weight

they will lower their calories but at the expense of what

like you're just going to keep lowering your calories to maintain your weight

and further drive yourself into hypothyroidism over the next years and decades

that's not a recipe for longevity and good health honestly

and thus

that is it for this obviously

but i don't think we need to

cover them here the only thing i'll just cover is the conflict of interest

so Francois Vio Helmi de Toledo

is managing director of AmpliSgmb which is

one of the companies that funded the study

that coordinates the scientific documentation

for the Buckinger Vio Helmi clinics

Francois Vio Helmi de Toledo and it says he's a

coworker of the Buckinger Vio Helmi clinic but look his name is Vio Helmi

and the clinic is called Buckinger Vio Helmi

so i think it's more than just a coworker he's like an executive here

and then Francisco Grundler is a coworker at the Buckinger

so it's again i'm happy how many markers

and the fact that they did a three month follow up i'm happy they did this

so we can glean a little bit deeper what's what's happening

i'm happy that i didn't omit some of these things but i'm not happy that

they glossed over some of these things and some some things were clearly like

the CRP remained unchanged during intervention does this look like it

it did not change yes it was lower on refeed day one

and refeed day three but it was back at baseline

three months later but it was doubled on day one

way higher on day four things like that

and so you can see things around the

the decreasing metabolic rate that was really

glossed over that's very significant for the long term

so the conflict of interest when it's your clinic

and then your company's funding it you want to produce good results

or at least report good results

the findings so because you want to you want to promote fasting

so i don't think people that say oh if if a fasting became mainstream it would

get put big farm out of businesses because i don't think it's true because

the negative effects of fasting

especially with health conscious people that are on the younger end like in their

still in their 40s or even younger the health the negative health effects

from periodic fasting or intermittent fasting for a long time

are gonna happen over these months

but possibly years and they're gonna be so slow

it's like looking at yourself in the mirror you don't see your aging you know

you don't see your aging so similarly if you're doing this

it's gonna creep up when you're so slowly

in some cases i've seen people that have wrecked themselves with fasting as well younger people as well

but with health conscious healthy people men strong men

et cetera with higher socio-economic status which is often the kind of people that

go to these clinics it's it's insidious but that's what i hate about it

what really grinds my gears is yeah they have a lot of ways to

for like they're not health conscious to wreck their health

but then with people that are health conscious it seems like these algorithms

are pushing up things that are

in an insidious way harm your health i don't think that's right i don't think that's good

i don't think that's leptible so i hope that

you glean some insights here

and i will absolutely be continuing to

to do more deep dives into some of these studies so that you can see what's going on

because it's all you know if you just read the abstract

look at this again

and i'll wrap this up because it's been an hour the abstract

so conclusions if you just look at the results

look here after transient reduction in flammatory cytocons return to baseline at day 10

soft tissues were still lower than baseline values

okay so at least they admitted that

but like the conclusion is

attend a fast appears to be safe in healthy humans

it's actually in healthy healthy humans can take more punishment

more disease humans are gonna in many cases

it's gonna hurt them more and then look protein also occurs in early

fast but decreases as ketogenesis increases so they're basically saying

it's fine it's temporary a few days four days

you're gonna enter ketogenesis and you know it's gonna be fine fasting combined with

physical activity does not negatively impact muscle function

and future studies we need to confirm these first findings

so that's a varies they often say stuff like that

just to kind of make sure we know we're not sure we need more research

so that's if you just read the abstract if you're busy

doctor or practitioner you just read the abstract

you're like okay well and then you read 20 of these

and gave your chat gpt that say gives you a bunch of studies and you just read

the abstract and you don't have time to dig into the nuances

you will be very much convinced that the literature supports

fasting is good for health

and it's safe and effective tm

but is it but is it though I'll let you decide

thanks for watching and I will see you on the next video slash episode

form you watching or listening thanks for

I think I said thanks for watching again but it never hurts to thank you one more time

see you on the next one